January 24, 2006

The Man Who Never Returned

They must have thought this guy was a union employee on the job.

It took more than six hours for anyone to realize that a 64-year-old Brooklyn man had died on a New York City subway train.

Eugene Reilly, who died of a heart attack, likely got onto a Brooklyn-bound Q train just before 1 a.m. Thursday. He wasn't found until 7:15 a.m. when a curious commuter touched his shoulder, trying to wake him, the New York Daily News reported.

Reilly, a mail handler, worked the 4 p.m.-to-12:30 a.m. shift and was headed home, his wife said. He was sitting up in his seat, which transit officials said was likely the reason their workers left him alone for so long, the newspaper said.

"The policy is that if someone is sitting up, employees are not allowed to touch them," said Deirdre Parker, a city transit spokeswoman.

A different transit official said employees probably saw Reilly, who was in the last car of the train, but thought he was sleeping.

"People sleep on the train all the time," an official said. "No one thought anything of it."

I know this happened in NYC, but I canÂ’t help but think of an old song.

Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.

Posted by: Greg at 03:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 241 words, total size 2 kb.

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
5kb generated in CPU 0.0031, elapsed 0.0104 seconds.
19 queries taking 0.0082 seconds, 28 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
[/posts]